[Peace-discuss] The real war in AfPak

[C. G. Estabrook]

...McChrystal has said he needs time, and 40,000-plus additional American 
troops. There are currently around 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. 
McChrystal’s request would raise that number to around 110,000 troops – the same 
number as the Soviets had deployed in Afghanistan at the height of their failed 
military adventure some 20 years ago.

...The Taliban, once a defeated entity in the months following the initial 
American military incursion into Afghanistan, are resurgent and growing stronger 
every day. The principle source of the Taliban’s popularity is the resentment of 
the Afghan people toward the American occupation and the corrupt proxy 
government of Hamid Karzai. There is nothing an additional 40,000 American 
troops will be able to do to change that basic equation. The Soviets tried and 
failed. They deployed 110,000 troops, operating on less restrictive lines of 
communication and logistical supply than the United States. They built an Afghan 
army of some 45,000 troops. They operated without the constraints of American 
rules of engagement. They slaughtered around a million Afghans. And they lost, 
for the simple reason that the people of Afghanistan did not want them, or their 
Afghan proxies.

Some pundits and observers make note of the fact that the Afghan people were 
able to prevail over the Soviets only because of billions of dollars of U.S. 
aid, which together with similar funding from Saudi Arabia and the logistical 
support of Pakistan, allowed the Afghan resistance to coalesce, grow and 
ultimately defeat the Soviets and their Afghan allies. They note that there is 
no equivalent source of empowerment for the Taliban in Afghanistan today. But 
they are wrong. The Taliban receive millions of dollars from sympathetic sources 
in the Middle East, in particular from Saudi Arabia, and they operate not only 
from within Afghanistan, but also out of safe havens inside Pakistan.

Indeed, one of the unique aspects of the Afghan conflict is the degree to which 
it has expanded into Pakistan, making any military solution in one theater 
contingent on military victory in the other. But the reality is that the more 
one employs military force in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, the more one 
strengthens the cause and resources of the Islamic insurgents in both places. 
Pashtunistan, once a fanciful notion built around the concept of a united 
Pashtun people (the population in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan are 
primarily drawn from Pashtun tribes), has become a de facto reality. The 
decision by the British in 1897 to separate the Pashtun through the artificial 
device of the so-called Durand Line (which today constitutes the border between 
Pakistan and Afghanistan) has been exposed today as a futile effort to undermine 
tribal links. No amount of military force can reverse this...

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/119328.html

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